Martin Hollis (video game designer)
| birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | nationality = British | other_names = | occupation = Video game designer | years_active = | known_for = | notable_works = GoldenEye 007 }} Martin Hollis (born 20 June 1971) is a British video game designer best known for directing the critically acclaimed Nintendo 64 first-person shooters GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. In 2000, he founded Zoonami, a video game development company based in Cambridge. Career . From left to right: Aleks Krotoski, David Braben, Martin Hollis, Alice Taylor.]] Martin Hollis studied computer science at the University of Cambridge. In 1993, when he was 22 years old, he applied for a job at Rare and became the company's first computer science graduate. Due to his knowledge of Unix, he was tasked to set up the networks of the expensive Silicon Graphics systems Rare had recently acquired at the time. He then worked as a second programmer on the coin-op version of Killer Instinct with Rare's technical director Chris Stamper, who designed the hardware. Hollis programmed the machine's operating system. After his work on Killer Instinct, Hollis was interested in leading a team to produce a video game based on the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, an idea that had been proposed to Rare at the highest level. The resulting game, GoldenEye 007, was released in 1997 to critical and commercial success. Hollis remarked that he worked non-stop on the game, "averaging an 80 hour week over the 2 and a half years of the project", and that the team he recruited was very talented and dedicated even though most of it was composed of people who had never worked on video games. Hollis and his team were then offered to produce a game based on the GoldenEye sequel Tomorrow Never Dies, but they turned it down without hesitation. He explained that they were all "pretty sick" of the James Bond universe by the time GoldenEye 007 was released, and that their next game needed to be different enough for him to be interesting. In late 1998, after becoming head of software at Rare and having worked for 14 months on Perfect Dark, a spiritual successor to GoldenEye 007, he left the company, partially because his ideas for the game were too ambitious. Although Perfect Dark was released 18 months later, his contributions to the game were significant and the game's protagonist, Joanna Dark, was his creation. After leaving Rare, Hollis took some time off and spent six months in Southeast Asia. According to him, "I couldn't see myself staying in Twycross small village where Rare is based. I wanted to see more of the world—wanderlust I suppose." Following a recommendation by Chris Stamper, Hollis then worked as a consultant on the development of the GameCube at Nintendo of America in Redmond, Washington. One of his responsibilities was to ensure that the GameCube hardware was game developer friendly. In 2000, he founded Zoonami, a video game development company based in Cambridge. The company's philosophy was to conceive innovative ideas and develop them further. At Zoonami, he worked on Zendoku, a Sudoku-based game released in 2007, and on Bonsai Barber, a hairdressing game released in 2009. Hollis is a regular contributor to the GameCity event in Nottingham, where he talks about the cultural importance of video games. Selected works * Killer Instinct (1994) * GoldenEye 007 (1997) * Perfect Dark (2000) * Zendoku (2007) * Bonsai Barber (2009) References }} External links * Category:1971 births Category:British video game designers Category:Living people Category:Perfect Dark Category:Place of birth missing (living people) Category:Rare (company) people